Changing pay arrangements without written instruction

I am absolutley FURIOUS at the moment, and want some information before my next phone call to my employer.

Long story short- I work for the Ed Dept and I am currently on maternity leave. We are entitled to 14 weeks paid leave, of which I have opted to have some pay full pay (untill the baby was born) and then half pay till the end.

I was told when I applied for maternity leave that I had to give written instructions to change my pay schedule, which I did. I range the week I was due to change to half pay, just to check they were doing it- they hadn't but the helpful lady I spoke to fixed it up for me.

Come today, I check my bank account and there is $1200 more in there than should be, this always rings alarm bells. Rang up to find out why, and someone in there wisdom had decided to change my pay back to full pay, and back pay me the other half a fortnight for the pay period before. This means now my mat leave will finish a month earlier than I expected and I am $500 out of pocket with extra tax & hecs repayments.

There argument is that I will get the money at tax time- NOT helpful as I will be back at work by then. What I want to know though, is can they change my pay schedule back without written instructions from me, if I had to give written instructions to change in the first place, surely I would have to give written instructions to change back??
Does anyone know?

I don't know for sure, but you make sense to me - they need written instructions. However, I don't think they can do anything about it now that its gone through :(

Sounds like the payroll officer has had a looked at your record on screen and assumed that a data entry error has been made without checking your hard copy file.

Did you receive a letter of confirmation outlining your maternity leave details from payroll? If so, this should also be on your file and leave details should not be amended without prior written instructions from yourself and approval from your manager.

It is not too late for the error to be corrected. Demand they do a recalculation and revert your leave back to original arrangement and tell them you will EFT the overpaid fund back into their account. If they are not willing to come to the party, I would make a complaint to upper management.

Or could they not pay you for two fortnights if you have the $ already?
I think whichever way you work it out theres not much they can do about the tax side of things evn if they fix up te payments so that your leave ends at the right time ( they should at least be able to dothat)

We have always been told by the Ed dept that any change has to be in writing so query this. Your leave is scheduled to finish at a certain time so your start & end date should be well documented along with pay arrangements.
Speak to the payroll officer at the school as she may have not sent in all the forms or sent them in correctly

The ed dpt are absolutely useless at this sort of thing. I hope you can get on to someone helpful who'll sort it out for you

It all turned out to be more complicated than I first thought- Payroll are only seeing me as 'fixed term' so the computer reverted me back, I thought because I had gained my permenancy that I was already permenant, but apparently not untill start of term 1 next year. Ed Dept are SLACK, I havent recieved a letter outlining my maternity leave, and currently because I am only contracted to 17th Dec and my new contract doesnt start untill 30/1/11 the system isn't recognising me! Anyway I actualley spoke a very helpful, and understanding bloke who helped me sort out- he even listened politley to my rant :)